Friday, September 30, 2011

A critical review of Lewis M. Simons' Opinon Column in USA Today

(photo by lewismsimmons.com)
Lewis M. Simons is an author and Pulitzer prize winning journalist.  He has written for the Knight-Ridder Newspapers, the Washington Post, the Associated Press, and written two books.  The majority of Mr. Simons' work has been on economic and civil issues of Asian countries.  "Simons' op-ed and analytical articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, Atlantic and Smithsonian magazines. He has contributed to National Geographic and his work also has appeared in USA Today, The Huffington Post, The Daily Beast and Daily Kos. He has appeared on ABC, NBC, MSNBC and CNN." (Amazon.com)  He is obviously an accomplished and a well established journalist.

Mr. Simons' Column: Why Americans don't just 'let them die' is addressing reactions during a GOP debate hosted by the Tea Party on September 12, 2011.  Texas Rep. Ron Paul was asked whether society should allow for an uninsured person to die rather than receive any form of Government intervention.  People in attendance cheered in favor of letting the hypothetical person die.

Simons is obviously upset by the reaction to the question as reflected in his arguments against the Republican party. He argues that their position of being the 'the party of life' is no longer valid because of this specific reaction and that Republicans are just plain mean spirited.

Though I could agree with his opinion, his argument is lacking any valid supporting points.  Instead he seeks to solicit an emotional response from his liberal audience by attacking Sarah Palin's comments on "death panels" and Michele Bachmann's uninformed statements about the HPV vaccine. Simons presents statistics from The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to prove Bachmann's statements about HPV were wrong, but fails to provide any evidence on why the GOP has lost it's position or is mean spirited.  Both, Palin and Bauchmann are two subjects that could be described as disliked, if not hated by most liberals. These two think tanks are easy targets that should stir up emotions in an effort to get the audience on his side.  Simons then veers from his argument once again by speaking generally of how Europeans and the Japanese are baffled by American's "emphasis on the individual at the cost of society".  A statement based on assumption and generalization of an entire country's societal view, not fact.  He then closes his argument with a slippery slope fallacy saying that any opposing argument will cause "a return to the not-so-grand old days when hundreds of thousands of Americans were disabled, disfigured or died of measles, polio, tuberculosis and a host of other diseases."

In all, Simons appealed to emotions and lacked any tangible evidence to support his argument that conservatives are meanies who hate life.  This column reads more like a person venting frustrations by pointing fingers and name calling.  Activities that are all too common in our political climate.

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